


you know the two of us are just young gods

by bluesargayent



Category: Lunar Chronicles - Marissa Meyer
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon, Short, tlcshipweeks, what? angst? noo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-05 08:43:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13384248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluesargayent/pseuds/bluesargayent
Summary: Legacy. What is a legacy? Planting seeds in a garden you never get to see? No, it’s laboring over the garden for years, and not able to control which plants will flourish and which will wither after you die





	you know the two of us are just young gods

**Author's Note:**

> title is from Halsey's "Young God" and the summary is inspired by that line in Hamilton "What is a legacy? It's planting seeds in a garden you never get to see."
> 
> Written for tlcshipweeks "legacy"

Kai never planned to be any more than a name on a long list of Eastern Commonwealth emperors. He would be recorded after his father, and before his successor. He most likely wouldn’t do anything insanely interesting in his rule, most likely just a couple beneficial legislation. For a moment, he thought maybe he could be known for his cybernetics rights campaign. He would be satisfied with that. It was a noble cause, and any help he could bring struggling cyborgs in the Eastern Commonwealth would be nice. 

Because the people who get paragraphs in history books where the ones who faced violent wars or a terrible environmental crisis. Never the rulers who maintained a stable economy and mediated minor domestic issues. As much as Kai hoped he’d make some huge move that could better not only the EC, but the entire Alliance of Nations, he knew realistically that he should be lucky to never make the history books. 

And yet … life doesn’t always work the way you want it to. 

 

Cinder never thought she’d ever be anyone significant. She was an orphan, a cyborg who won’t be heading to college beside her adoptive sisters. She would work at her mechanic stall until she smuggled away enough money to take her android and disappear to the European Union. There, she knew of towns that never went back on grid after the big war. Towns where they didn’t speak universal so she’d have to learn a whole new language and forget her old one and then she’d really be starting fresh. 

But that was back when she was a nobody. Which she was fine with. She accepted it. But then everything changed and suddenly she was somebody. A Lunar. A princess. A friend to the prince- no, emperor. She went from no one knowing her name to ‘Linh Cinder’ being scrolled along the bottom of every portscreen (immediately proceeding the word ‘wanted’). She had to say, she preferred being a nobody, even when fame didn’t come with the threat of death. 

Sometimes, though, you don’t get what you want. 

 

So the Emperor who made the history books and the Queen with biographies already in the works found each other. Together, they faced the world and took it one day at a time. They walked head first into media storms and came out the other side stronger than before. They found a talent for knowing when the other needed a break, taking bullets to cover them in the firestorm. They were a team, soldiers in life, pioneers of a new government. Together, they felt the burden of completely turning the Lunar monarchy upside down, and even after Cinder abdicated, together they stood a symbol of how things can change. 

Together, they created reform on Earth to reserve the stigma against cyborgs created by hundred of years of government propaganda. They issued official apologies and did their best to make things right. They headed new research into plague prevention and handled the sudden influx of Lunar refugees with grace. 

The legacy of one could never be complete without the other. They were stronger together, which was good because they needed to be strong. When people in the future would look back on the pair of them, they would look back with awe at the obstacles they faced and the trials they went through only to come out the other side with a chip on their shoulder they used for good. Those to come wouldn’t see the struggle that came with each action, the trauma the two endured, the fear of any little mistake coming back to haunt them. 

But that’s how life goes. It moves on and on, and you can’t control what will stand out over the eons. At least, Cinder and Kai can’t. All you can do is work to make the present moment the best it can be, and, really, what’s the point in anything else?


End file.
